Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Walt Disney World
is cutting operating hours for its monorail, a move designed to give
maintenance crews more time to work on the aging transportation system.

Disney
plans to begin shutting down monorail service one hour after regularly
scheduled park closings in the Magic Kingdom and Epcot, the two theme
parks served by the resort's trains. In addition, Disney will no longer
run the trains during evening "Extra Magic Hours," the late-night period
during which only guests staying in Disney hotels are allowed in the
parks.

Monorails Face to Face inside Contemporary Resort

Disney had previously kept its trains running until at
least one-and-a-half hours after park closing or through any extended
hours. The changes are effective beginning today at Epcot and Aug. 1 for
the Magic Kingdom.

"There are definitely more monorails going down" because of service
interruptions, said John Frost, publisher of the Disney Blog, a popular
website. "I think it's been pretty obvious that [transportation
maintenance] is one of the areas they cut back on during the recession."

In
addition, Disney World's monorail fleet has been operating shorthanded —
with 11 trains instead of 12 —since a July 5, 2009, train collision
that killed a 21-year-old monorail driver. Disney salvaged one train
using cars from each of the two involved in the crash, but it has not
replaced the second train.